July 23, 2001

Justin
Raimondo is traveling. His column will return Wednesday.
Today we present a classic column from 1999.

October
11, 1999

KOSOVO GOES
FASCIST

Months after NATO's
assault on the former Yugoslavia, the fruits of that
alleged "victory" have begun to appear in all their
misshapen ugliness: what is clearly evolving in Yugoslavia's
conquered province, is a full-fledged fascist state.
And I don't mean that rhetorically, in the sense that
I think the KLA are not very nice: I mean that literally,
as in self-conscious fascists have seized de facto
power in Kosovo. During the war I warned, in this
column, that the ideological pedigree of the Kosovo
Liberation Army can be traced back to some very
dubious sources, including the pro-Nazi Skanderbeg
Division of the SS that fought for Germany during
World War II, as well as supporters of the late Enver
Hoxha, Albania's Stalinist strongman. Now the fascist
KLA is coming out of the closet, baring its fangs,
and showing its true face for all the world to see:
yet, somehow, the world is no longer looking. The
Western media, which clamored for  and, indeed,
created  this war, would much rather avert
its face than confront, head on, the consequences
of their enthusiasms.

AMANPOUR'S
"FREEDOM-FIGHTERS"

I cannot forget a CNN special documentary
on the KLA, narrated by Christiane Amanpour, commander-in-chief
of the journalistic division of the War Party, and wife of
State Department spokesman James Rubin. Amanpour's interviews
with KLA cadre uniformly depicted them as victims fighting
in a righteous cause, and her voice seemed to swell with pride
as she continually described them as "freedom fighters." KLA
recruits, questioned about their political beliefs and the
goals of their movement, typically claimed to be fighting
for "democracy" and "a normal life, just like in America."
CNN rounded up an "expert" from the pro-KLA "Human Rights
Watch" who rationalized KLA excesses and reiterated the US
government line that the KLA were admirable and worthy of
American support.

GOOSE-STEPPING
THROUGH PRISTINA

But even
here, in the midst of what was nothing more than a propaganda
piece, viewers got a glimpse of the truth: footage of a KLA
parade, with smart young soldiers dressed in red and black
practically goose-stepping down the street, red banners flying.
During the war, KLA commanders were told by their American
handlers to quit using the old straight-arm KLA salute: it
was just a coincidence, of course, that this open-palmed
salute was identical to the Hitlerian version.

"HUMAN RIGHTS
WATCH" ISN'T WATCHING

Now that
Human Rights Watch is no longer watching, and Madeleine Albright's
ardor for Kosovar strongman Hacim Thaci seems to have cooled
considerably, the KLA is openly moving to establish an "ethnically
pure" fascist state  and it is not only Serbs who are the
victims.

FREE TO DIE

The news
that the Kosovapress, the official organ of the KLA high command,
has denounced Veton Surroi, publisher of Koha Ditore,
Kosovo's leading newspaper, as a traitor  and strongly implied
that his death may be imminent  hit the NATO-crats like
a thunderclap. Surroi is a traitor, according to an article
by Marxhan Avdyli, and has all along been a Serbian agent:
not only that, but he is now a spy in the pay of nameless
Western interests. The editors of Koha Ditore are a
"bastard ragtag" band of "ordinary mobsters"; they are
also, we are informed, "the garbage of history." Ominously,
Avdyli warns that Surroi is at risk of "eventual and very
understandable revenge" and further avers that "such criminals
and enslaved minds should not have a place in the free Kosovo."
This is what the KLA means by a "free" Kosovo  a nation
free of all political dissent.

BLOOD AND IRONY

So, what's
the KLA's beef with Surroi? If you haven't already, take a
look at "Today's Spotlight," on the main page, a commentary
by Surroi originally published in Koha Ditore that
takes aim at the KLA's evolving fascist regime. He condemns
the reverse ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, and denounces "the
organized and systematic intimidation of all Serbs simply
because they are Serbs and therefore are being held collectively
responsible for what happened in Kosovo. Such attitudes are
fascist." The irony of the West's "antifascist" crusade against
Milosevic and Serbian "racism" is that it has created the
makings of a racist fascist state in Kosovo. As Surroi puts
it,

"From
having been victims of Europe's worst end-of-century persecution,
we are ourselves becoming persecutors and have allowed the
specter of fascism to reappear. Anybody who thinks that the
violence will end once the last Serb has been driven out is
living an illusion. The violence will simply be directed against
other Albanians. Is this really what we fought for?"

GOEBBELS 
THE SEQUEL

Well, yes,
as a matter of fact, that is indeed what the KLA was
fighting for. They have always been authoritarians, as well
as racists and fascists. Why should anyone be surprised and
even shocked  shocked!  that today they are denouncing
Surroi in explicitly ethnic terms? The Kosovapress commentary
excoriates both the editor and the publisher of Koha Ditore
in explicitly racialist language, making reference to them
as "gospodin" (the Serbian honorific for "Mr."), claiming
they have "Slav stink" in spite of the fact that they "unfortunately
were made of Albanian blood, or at least were declared as
such, because you never know the origin of the pro-Serbs."
William Houwen, coordinator of media development for the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe, aptly remarked that
"Goebbels couldn't have done it better."

HEIL THACI!

As to whether or not the KLA intends to reinstate
the open-palmed straight arm salute of old remains to be seen,
but one thing is for sure: the US, the Europeans, and those
few politically active Albanian intellectuals with any scruples
all knew who and what they were supporting  and describing
as "freedom fighters," in the immortal words of Christiane
Amanpour. Now, let them squirm out of this one!

AGIM CEKU,
WAR CRIMINAL

Of course they knew: just like they
knew all about Agim Ceku, the 38-year-old former Croatian
army brigadier, who commanded forces that slaughtered hundreds
of Serb civilians in the Krajina region and turned the rest
 some 300,000-plus  into refugees. With US military assistance,
including help from a "private" group of "retired" US generals
and intelligence operatives  and with former state department
official Richard Galbraith reportedly riding atop a Croatian
tank  the Croatians, under Ceku's command, decisively defeated
the Serbs, four years ago. The Krajina campaign broke the
back of the Serbian military resistance and turned the tide
in the Balkan war, putting Milosevic on the defensive. The
epic carnage was such that not even the War Crimes Tribunal,
which has never taken note of crimes against Serbs, could
avoid noticing. Therefore, no one was really surprised when
the Tribunal announced yesterday that it was investigating
Ceku for possible war crimes.

REWARD AND
PUNISHMENT

Now surely
no one believes that the NATO-crats were unaware of what Ceku
had been up to in the Krajina when they appointed him supreme
commander of the "Kosovo Protection Corps" (TMK), a force
of some 5,000 recruits described as "lightly armed." Indeed,
his present position was awarded to him on the basis of the
Krajina campaign, which in a military sense was a success
 even if it was not exactly an act of "liberation" but an
act of conquest  aided and abetted (and no doubt financed)
by the US.

DON'T "LOSE"
THAT THUG!

To get some
concept of the moral complicity of the NATO-crats in the elevation
of a mass murderer  a man who executed hundreds and wantonly
destroyed entire communities  to a position of real authority
in postwar Kosovo, get a load of what a diplomat described
by the London Times as "close to Bernard Kouchner,
the head of the UN mission," has to say about the accusations
against Ceku: "If we lose him it will be a disaster. When
you get to the second level of the TMK, you're down to a bunch
of local thugs." In the spectrum of brutality represented
by the KLA, Ceku is a moderate  relatively speaking.
The NATO-crats are scared to death that they will "lose" a
Class-A thug to the War Crimes Tribunal  so this
is what the tale of Kosovo's "freedom fighters" comes down
to, eh Christiane?

DON'T HOLD
YOUR BREATH

Naturally,
the indictment of Ceku, if and when it comes, will be sealed
and not available to the public. After all, could the Western
powers really be expected to document their own crimes? At
any rate, don't hold your breath waiting for the Tribunal
to act, even in the deepest darkest secrecy. According to
David Slinn, the senior British diplomat in Kosovo: "There's
speculation as to whether he's going to stick around or not."
Although an ethnic Albanian, Commander Ceku has a house and
a family in Croatia, a nation which has repeatedly refused
to hand over to The Hague Croatian citizens accused of war
crimes. In view of his services to the Croatian state, Tudjman's
regime is likely to treat Ceku as an honorary Croatian. The
Times cites another diplomat who is of the opinion
that the NATO-crats could not risk a confrontation with the
KLA by arresting Ceku.

DOUBLE STANDARD

A few years
ago, American intellectuals and their European cousins were
screeching that the Allies were letting alleged Serbian "war
criminals" slip through their fingers: they demanded that
the Bosnian Serb leadership, up to and including Slobodan
Milosevic, must be arrested and put on trial. The cry went
up: Don't let them get away! The NATO-crats obligingly swooped
down on half a dozen or so suspects, all Serbs, and the War
Party was temporarily mollified. Now we hear the same crowd,
the Susan Sontags and the New York Review of Books
crowd, along with the rabid "collective guilt" school of retribution
centered around The New Republic, calling for reeducation
camps for Serbs and the expunging of all traces of nationalism
and "racism" from the Serbian soul. But these same people
are strangely silent about Ceku: not a word, not a whisper,
not even the feeblest of protests.

OSCE  THE
ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIALISM AND COERCION IN EUROPE

What kind
of a society are the Allies creating in Kosovo? Certainly
by any standard familiar to the West, we are not talking about
a democracy in the sense that the concept of democratic rights
is protected by the government: indeed, under the rubric of
UN rule, the Kosovar media is to be strictly controlled. In
the view of the NATO-crats, this latest outburst from the
Kosovapress  which, after the war, was converted into the
mouthpiece of the self-proclaimed "interim government" of
Kosovo, headed up by Hacim Thaci  is an argument to start
implementing the Orwellian media plan envisioned by the postwar
planners under the auspices of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Familiarity with this plan
should disabuse anyone na´ve enough to believe that we went
to war in order to bring the benefits of "democracy" and "freedom"
to the benighted peoples of Kosovo.

THE CENSORS

Under the
terms of the plan, all media would be licensed and any accused
of fomenting "hate speech" would soon find their permission
to publish or broadcast curtailed if not eliminated. Control
of the media is to be handed over to a "Media Board," comprised
of five people described by Daan Everts, head of the OSCE
mission, as "well respected intellectuals." They are: Mahmut
Bakali, a former leader of the Communist Party of Kosovo,
Pajazit Nushi, former head of the Council for the Defense
of Human Rights and Freedoms in Kosovo, Liri Osmani, a lawyer,
Shkelzen Maliqi, of George Soros's Open Society Foundation,
and a token Serb, Aca Rakocevic, for purely decorative purposes.
Looking over their shoulders will be Everts, and his assistant,
Mirjana Robin, but OSCE officials insist that this will be
a truly homegrown board of censors. Says Everts: "We don't
want to bring foreign dictators or rules here. We would like
these things to originate from here and that's why we gave
so much importance to the creation and the functioning of
a Kosovar Board." Why impose "foreign dictators"  when native
dictators are so readily available?

ORWELL'S GHOST

The Orwellian
possibilities of a "Council for the Defense of Human Rights
and Freedoms" engaged in abrogating freedom of the press are
virtually endless. The participation of the "Open Society
Institute" in closing off free and open debate is likewise
emblematic of what is happening in Kosovo today. Under the
banner of building a democratic society, basic democratic
rights are denied; in the name of a war against "fascism,"
the NATO-crats are setting up a fascist mini-state in the
heart of Europe.

THINGS TO COME

The real
danger is that they will use this bastion of thuggery as a
battering ram against what is left of the Yugoslav federation.
In comparing defeated Serbia to Nazi Germany, justifying media
curbs as the price to pay for "reconstruction," and gleefully
contemplating war crimes trials and "reeducation camps" for
Serbs, one gets the ominous feeling that the NATO-crats will
not stop with Kosovo.

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